The present invention relates to an improvement in or relating to fastener attachers, broadly. More particularly, the invention relates to an improved fastener attacher having a fastener guide means which, upon operation of the attacher, can feed individual fasteners to be dispensed by the attacher without fail and can prevent the individual fasteners from undergoing an unintended engagement with object articles or wares to which they are to be applied.
Since some time ago, an enormous number of fasteners made of a synthetic resin which are often referred to as tag pins have been utilized in, for example, attaching price tags or the like to various items of merchandise or for combining together or altogether a plurality of articles or wares to a combined unitary assembly or assemblies.
Those fasteners individually comprise a head, a crossbar and their interconnecting filament, and in normal cases, 30 to 50 individual fasteners are altogether formed on a common connecting rod to thus comprise a fastener assembly, for reasons of their production and their handling.
Fastener assemblies are molded from a synthetic resin characterized by having a property of molecular orientation such as nylon or polypropylene, and they have their filaments so stretched as to resemble a fine fiber and to be highly flexible.
In dispensing individual fasteners to object articles or wares, a fastener attacher is utilized, which has a guide groove within which a fastener assembly is loaded. As the operation lever or trigger of the attacher is then pulled, the crossbar of a first fastener is applied through an object article for example a garment, from either or the other face of the fabric thereof. Same operations as above are made also in combining to a unitary assembly a plurality of articles such as for example a pair of slippers, gloves, socks or stockings and so forth.
Then, it has of late grown to be more often demanded that a greater number of fasteners than before are to be dispensed in a continuous operation, and in accordance with this, the common connecting rod for individual fasteners in each fastener assembly is made so great in length as to be 2 to 3 times as long as the connecting rod of previous fastener assemblies and carry thereon a greater number of individual fasteners of the order of 100 to 150 or, in certain cases, 200 so that the number of fasteners to be dispensed in a continuous fastener dispensing operation can be increased.
FIG. 1 of the accompanying drawings is taken for illustration of a manner in which a fastener assembly 2 of which the common connecting rod is relatively long is dispensed by means of a conventional fastener attacher 1, in connection with a price tag 3 to be anchored by the fastener to an object article or ware.
As shown, the conventional fastener attacher 1 is devoid of means for guiding or holding in position the free end of the fastener assembly 2, whereby the fastener assembly 2 is easily permitted to sway in directions 2' and/or 2" or, further, in this and/or that directions relative to the plane of the drawing sheet and the fastener dispensing operation is thus considerably inconvenienced. That is to say, the fastener assembly 2 is permitted to sway in various directions as a fastener dispensing operation is made, so that the operation cannot be worked at a high efficiency; in addition, an operator or user of the attacher 1 is required to always watch the swaying fastener 2 so as to effectively carry out the fastener applying operation without fail, whereby he or she has to suffer from an eye fatigue in a relatively short period of time.
Further, as the fastener assembly 2 sways as shown in FIG. 1, it often is likely that the head or crossbar or, in certain cases, the connecting rod of individual fasteners of the loaded assembly 2 becomes hooked or otherwise engaged with for example the fabric of an object garment to break the fabric yarn or otherwise damage the object article.
Furthermore, if the fastener undergoes an unintentional engagement with the object article as mentioned above, the fastener feeding mechanism of the fastener attacher can no longer be effectively operated.